Cleveland Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who had just won a landslide reelection in 2018, contemplated a presidential run on a populist platform that targeted the large number of working-class Midwest voters who had defected from the Democratic Party to Donald Trump.
Brown did not participate in the White House campaign. Six years later, he is about to lose his job after losing his campaign for a fourth term in the Senate. He will not be holding an elected seat for the first time since 1992 and for the second time since 1974.
Meanwhile, Brown and the Democrats are already facing existential issues as Trump prepares to return to the White House next month. While just retaining two Senate seats in Michigan and Wisconsin, the GOP also lost one in Pennsylvania. Trump won Ohio by a landslide in November and flipped all three of those blue wall states.
Brown, 72, has been warning about the difficulties for years, ever since he was a House member and vehemently opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Furthermore, despite his loss, Brown has the chance to play a prominent role in the party if he so desires because of his position in a region of the nation where Democrats are a damaged brand.
Brown recently spoke like someone who does in an interview with NBC News. He mentioned a purpose to reposition Democrats as the Middle American workers’ party after leaving the Senate. He also disclosed that, although he stated that he is not interested in the role, he has gotten calls urging him to run for chair of the Democratic National Committee.
“You have a platform as the national chair,” Brown stated. Managing an organization with fifty state chairmen is another requirement. I don t want to spend my time on an airplane raising money.
But Brown s post-Senate mission could lead him back to the Senate. He left the door open to running for office again in 2026, when Ohio will hold a special election to fillthe remainder of Vice President-elect JD Vance s term. Brown also is noticeably describing the final remarks he plans to deliver in the Senate Tuesday afternoon as his last speech not as a farewell, as such speeches from outgoing senators are commonly known.
I m not making decisions yet on that, Brown replied when asked if he was already considering a comeback in 2026, when Ohio also will elect a new governor. I ve got time.
For now, Brown is unleashing stinging critiques about his party.
I m not going to whine about my loss, he said. But I lost in large part because the national reputation of the Democratic Party is that we are sort of a lighter version of a corporation a corporate party. We re seen as a bicoastal, elite party. And it s hard to argue that.
Brown then added: We couldn t pass the minimum wage because Republicans almost uniformly were against it. It s always Republicans who are on the wrong side, and there aren t enough Democrats on the right side to win. It s a good example of how workers get screwed.
Even after his loss to Republican Bernie Moreno this fall, no Democrat in the state has anywhere close to Brown’s track record of name-recognition or electoral success. He outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, by 7.5 percentage points in Ohio. Brown s allies believe that he had coattails that helped endangered Democratic Reps. Marcy Kaptur and Emilia Sykes hold onto their congressional seats in tough districts.
Brown, for his part, has been reciting the 7.5-point figure with an almost cosmic reverence. While dissecting trade policy, for example, he argued that both parties had ganged up on workers while asserting that Ohio voters trust him more than other Democrats on those issues.
That s why I ve won elections in the state, he said. It s why I finished 7-and-a-half points ahead of Harris. Harris won the union vote [in Ohio]by like 1 point. I won it by like 20.
Moreno and his alliesemphasized other issuesin the Senate race, including immigration and border security, as well as the debate over transgender rights and transition-related medical care. One admocked Brownfor supporting the use of pronouns like they and them.
He s not wrong that Democrats have forgotten how to talk about workers, Jai Chabria, a Vance adviser and veteran Republican strategist in Ohio, said of Brown. But he also doesn t accept blame for their cultural war failings, because he s part of that. And that s one of the reasons that working-class voters have been willing to look away from the Democratic Party. It s not just union issues, and it s not just NAFTA. It s a lot of things that regular people care about.
Few votes factor more into Brown s political legacy than his 1993 vote against NAFTA, a trade pact involving Canada and Mexico that accelerated the outsourcing of jobs and the decline of U.S. manufacturing towns. Brown talks of NAFTA like it s an original sin for his party the moment Democrats began losing the working class.
He recalled how, as lobbying for the bill intensified, an employee at a Washington-area airport marveled to him how they had never seen so many corporate jets parked there. He also remembered how then-Rep. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., who at the time was whipping support for NAFTA, had grumbled to him about losing votes after members returned home to their districts for recess and heard negative feedback from their constituents.
I said, Bill, well, maybe we ought to listen to what the voters want on this, Brown recalled.
Even though more Democratsvoted against it than for it, their help in ratifying the deal has not been forgotten in working-class parts of Ohio like Dayton and the Mahoning Valley, which includes Youngstown and since 2016 has swung from Democratic stronghold to Trump stomping ground.
It s more acute in the Mahoning Valley, said Brown, wholost the region s anchoring counties, Mahoning and Trumbullbut by much smaller marginsthan Harris did.
Regarded asan unflappable liberalearlier in his Senate career, Brown s flirtations with a 2020 presidential campaign came with a more nuanced tone. Hepreached pragmatism and incrementalismat a time other would-be nominees were demanding Medicare for All. His core message as he toured early voting states like Iowacentered on the dignity of work.
During his recent re-election race,Brown played up his relationships with Republicansand his populist stance on trade. His super PAC allies emphasized his agreement with Trump on anti-opioid legislation and other policy issues. In the final hours of the campaign, Browncampaigned with former President Bill Clinton, the Democrat who signed NAFTA into law.
Brown said he had no advice for Democrats trying to gauge when to push back on Trump and when to work with him, reaching instead for a campaign soundbite that politics should not be about the left or the right: It s really whose side are you on?
He added that he hoped senators would cast a more skeptical look at Trump s choice for labor secretary, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. The Oregon Republican is known for her labor-friendly views, includingco-sponsorship of a billthat would protect union organizing rights. But Brown stressed that expanded overtime pay aBiden administration initiativerecentlythwarted by a Trump-nominated judge in Texasmight be a better barometer on where she stands on key workers issues.
They say she s better than others, or other Republicans, on labor, Brown said. She s had a couple of good votes, I guess. But they ve got to pin her down: Are you going to fix the overtime?
Brown was reflective at other points during the interview, calling March 6, 2021 the day the Senate passedthe $1.9 trillion American Rescue Planas his most meaningful moment in Congress. The far-reaching legislation included the Brown-championedButch Lewis Act, which was named for an Ohio Teamster and protected pension benefits for workers and retirees.
Democrats need to celebrate those victories and celebrate work that way, Brown said. And if you do that it s what we should do it s how we win elections.
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